Comment by tjs8rj
7 days ago
Why do we need to make mental healthcare available to everyone?
For all of human history people have got along just fine, happily in fact, without “universal access to mental health care”
This just sounds like a bandaid. The bigger problem is we’ve created a society so toxic to the human soul that we need universal access to drugs and talk therapy or risk having significant chunks of the population fall off the map
> For all of human history people have got along just fine, happily in fact, without “universal access to mental health care”
Mixing up "some people survived" and "everyone was fine" is a common mistake.
Some folks who're able to thrive today on drugs and therapy are the "tragically wandered off in a snowstorm" of past eras.
It's the same token as more people dying from cancer than ever before. Yes, modern society creates many more cancer patients than ever, but less people are dying early from things that aren't cancer than ever.
We live in a society that, for the most people, has the best quality of life than ever in history. But in having that increase, we eliminate many problems that must be replaced by other problems.
In this case, a mental health crisis comprised of people who either wouldn't have survived to that point, or whose results went unremarked or shrugged off as something else in the past. In terms of violent outbursts, we also have easier access to more destructive weapons (even those that aren't guns) and more density of population on whom violence can be inflicted.
> For all of human history people have got along just fine, happily in fact, without “universal access to mental health care”
Can we please stop with these incredibly low-effort arguments that are just blatantly untrue with about 5 seconds of inspection? If I have to hear "well humans did just fine before!" one more time I'm going to lose my mind.
No, no they did not. We can't ask them because they're dead now. The ones we can ask are the ones who survived. We might call this a "survivorship bias".
There's practically infinite graphs showing the trends of survivability and quality of life throughout time. Less infants die now, less adults die now, we live longer, we live happier, we live with less illnesses. There's less polio, less measles, less tuberculosis, you fucking name it.
I mean, for god's sake before modern medicine infant mortality was close to 50%. Women would have 10 children, maybe 4 would make it to adult hood, and she'd die giving birth to the 10th. That's assuming she didn't get unlucky and die on the first one because her body wasn't perfectly set to give birth. Shoulder dystocia? Too fucking bad, you lost the lottery, go die now.
>Why do we need to make mental healthcare available to everyone?
Why do we need to make physical healthcare available to everyone? For most all of human history, bones were set by family. Yeah, ok, often the patient was hobbled for life. I guess it makes sense to get treated by a professional...wait, perhaps we've stumbled upon something here...
Just fine? Happily?
Surely many wars and deaths would have been prevented with better mental strategies.
No one is stopping you from making society better...
In the mean time it's best we all have
I suggest you put the terms "warfare," "genocide," and "slavery" into Wikipedia and then tell us how fine people got along.